The 15-nation Caribbean Community (Caricom) now has new fisheries policy, but the fishery laws of most member states are outdated. After several years of drafting and negotiations, the Common Fisheries Policy was adopted earlier this month at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture 2014 held in Suriname. Executive Director of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism or CRFM, Milton Haughton says the ...

San Juan, Oct 22 (EFE).- Family and community discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Jamaica has boosted the number of LGBT people living on the streets, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch. In its report “Not Safe at Home,” uploaded Tuesday to HRW’s Web site, the human rights organization warns that LGBT people are often ...

San Juan, Oct 22 (EFE).- The demands of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, for slavery reparation from Europe “do not strengthen the integration process” because they divert attention from priority issues, an expert told Efe on Wednesday. Ivan Ogando Lora, director of the Dominican campus of the Latin American College of Social Sciences, told Efe today that CARICOM should focus ...

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) will once again ensure that Haiti has insurance coverage to limit the impact of catastrophic hurricanes and or earthquakes. The Barbados-based CDB says it is is providing a grant of USD2.5 million dollars to cover Haiti’s premium to the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) for the period June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2015. ...

Rio de Janeiro, Oct 22 (EFE).- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is running for reelection, is three percentage points ahead of opposition candidate Aecio Neves in the latest voter intention poll conducted in the week before the runoff and released Wednesday.The head of state and candidate of the ruling Workers Party, or PT, was supported by 47 percent of the ...

Havana, Oct 22 (EFE).- A brigade of 83 Cuban health care workers departed for Liberia and Guinea Conakry to help in the fight to contain the Ebola virus as part of Havana’s contribution to the West African countries most affected by the epidemic, state-run media reported Wednesday.This is the second group of health professionals that Cuba has sent to Africa, ...

Senior government ministers are meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, later this week to discuss ways to unlock economic growth in the Caribbean region. The meeting from 23 to 24 October is being hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the government of Jamaica. The issues to be discussed include the reliability and efficiency of energy provision and a tax ...

Rio de Janeiro, Oct 22 (EFE).- A Brazilian engineer has designed a machine capable of producing 5,000 liters (1,325 gallons) of drinking water a day by condensing humidity from the air and processing it to make it suitable for human consumption. Since 2010, Pedro Ricardo Paulino has sold 200 of his Wateair devices introduced to the markets just as the ...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Oct 22 (EFE).-A U.S. federal judge has rejected a lawsuit filed by several homosexual couples claiming their marriages contracted in other states of the United States should be recognized in Puerto Rico. Judge Juan Perez Gimenez dismissed the lawsuit which was initially filed by activist Ada Conde and her spouse, Ivonne Alvarez, and was later joined ...

San Juan, Oct 21 (EFE).- Several Caribbean islands have recently barred entry by people coming from West African countries affected by Ebola as a measure of “economic survival,” an expert told Efe on Tuesday. Tourism is “the backbone of the Caribbean economies,” Ivan Ogando Lora, director of the Dominican Republic’s Latin American College of Social Sciences, pointed out during a visit to Puerto Rico. ...